Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to the fabrication of electrical components and circuits, and more particularly to a system and method for forming three dimensional sub-mm frequency antennas on flexible and in-situ cured dielectric material along with directly printed metallic antenna elements over the dielectric.
Discussion of the Related Art
The continual drive for smaller, more powerful, and more economical electronic systems led to the development of new manufacturing technologies. In particular, the fabrication of three-dimensional (3D) metal-dielectric structures at sub-mm length scale is highly important in order to realize low-loss passives and GHz wavelength antennas with applications in wearable and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices.
To date, attempts to form sub-mm length scale 3D metal-dielectric structures include: (a) manufacturing metal lines in two-dimensions (2D) over a dielectric substrate and folding them into 3D shapes similar to an Origami, or (b) printing metal lines on a pre-manufactured 3D surface. The Origami folding of the substrate can result in 3D shapes only if the metal traces at the Origami folds are compliant enough to accommodate the extreme strain at or near the Origami folds. In addition, the number of 3D shapes are rather limited. Finally, the degree of folding of Origami is difficult to control due to the inherent structural instabilities and the nonlinear stress/strain response of these structures, leading to an unpredictable response over the operating frequencies in the case of its use in antennas. The approach in (b) suffers from the fact that the metal lines need to be stretched well beyond the yield/ultimate tensile strength of metals to reach the final shapes, requiring serpentine structures and thus increasing the device resistance. Direct write processes such as inkjet printing are also available for 2D fabrication of antenna structures. Inkjet printing is cheap and allows improved layout flexibility such as post-process deposition of thick dielectric layers and a relatively improved isolation from the substrate. Producing complex shapes or geometries along with traces, however, is difficult with inkjet printing at sub-mm length scale mainly because of the passive drop-on-demand nature of the inkjet process.
Thus, there is a need to provide for a novel micro-additive manufacturing method without removal of material to provide for structures at sub-mm length scales to be used as passives as well as antennas for wireless high-speed applications. The present embodiments are directed to such a need.